Where to dine in Adelaide

The Bombay Bicycle Club in Ovingham set up a sign at the front of its restaurant outlining just how much it would cost them to open on a public holiday. They multiplied everything on the menu 2.75 times in an attempt to highlight the “stupidity” of the new rate.

The bread would be $19.25 under the cafe’s calculations, while lamb korma was $65, salt and pepper squid $55, chicken schnitzel $48.50 and it would be more than $60 for a seafood pizza.

Used to be many in pub, restaurant, club businesses preferred to work weekends and have days off during week. Double, double time and a half was NOT a pre-requisite for these people but for their union it was a MUST.

A restaurant boycotted by economically illiterate lefty turds? Sounds like a nice place.

Sounds like a very effective marketing ploy for the savvy restaurant owner.

I wouldn’t bother with it in Adelaide though because, well, it is the state which makes the socialist republic of Victoria and malingerers republic of Taswegia look like they are going soft on leftardism.

By about five people who are in the Socialist Alliance and can’t afford to eat there on Aus Study.

This is as consequential as being made chairperson of the local library PR committee.

Exactly.

The rampant narcissism of the Internet left really is a sight to behold. They only have power because their victims mistakenly give them power. If they truly had sway or power Julia Gillard would be Grand Potentate for life, News Ltd would be banned and Andrew Bolt would be sitting in a Gulag. Instead it’s Julia who? NewsLtd is going gang busters and Bolt’s going to be on TV for an hour a week this year.

The stupidity is multiplying by 2.75 – do their fixed costs also increase by this amount on weekends? Interesting stunt.

That is not the point they are trying to make. Of course wages do not represent 100% of their costs, and other costs do not rise by 2.75 times. The point is to simply illustrate the absurdity of expecting anyone to pay 2.75 times the price for any good or service just because it is a public holiday.

If you went to buy milk on a public holiday, would you be happy to pay 2.75 times the normal price? You expect to pay a bit more for things, but not 2.75 times.

The worst thing it takes away jobs from some of our young people, or seriously decreases their hours.
I think we need to think more of their future, rather than trying to shut down businesses because of a political philosophy.

What these laws mean is that restaurants simply won’t open on public holidays. On such days, Australian dining hubs will be wastelands of tumbleweeds.

I noticed that many on twitter taunted them with words along the lines of “if you don’t want to pay, don’t open that day!” As if this is a witty retort that shows the restaurateurs to be all words. They obviously (and embarrassingly) don’t realise that this is, in fact, the actual outcome of the policy.

I noticed that many on twitter taunted them with words along the lines of “if you don’t want to pay, don’t open that day!” As if this is a witty retort that shows the restaurateurs to be all words. They obviously (and embarrassingly) don’t realise that this is, in fact, the actual outcome of the policy.

A large number of restaurants that once used to be open on Sunday are now closed in melbourne. Shops that used to be open are also now closed.

They obviously (and embarrassingly) don’t realise that this is, in fact, the actual outcome of the policy.

Come on. Don’t you know the mere act of ABN registration conjures never ending visits from the profit fairy? The profit fairy steals from starving undergraduates and redistributes to the business owner. It’s an outrage, I tells ya!

I keep encouraging my local cafe owner to publish “variable labour rate” tiered pricing on his menu. He hasn’t come around yet, though he has resorted to a 10% surcharge on public holidays.

The social media crowd are the new standover men for small business. Any business that breaks ranks and voices an opinion at odds with the twitterati gets attacked online, a twitter and facebook page filled with bile and hate, and a downvote anywhere and everywhere the angry mob can find, followed by a lecture about how ‘dumb’ they were to break rank.

‘It was a silly stunt’ is basically an implied threat: ‘if you ever try that move again it’ll go even worse for you’.

‘It was a silly stunt’ is basically an implied threat: ‘if you ever try that move again it’ll go even worse for you’.

But as demonstrated many, many times there is no “worse”.

They put everything they had into, say, Alan Jones. And how did that go? His advertisers came crawling back after a minute realising that:

a) Twitter “politics” is a reflection mostly of the University / Public servant class and nothing else.
b) Twitter leftists have absolutely no principles and will Tweet that they will “boycott” something but that afternoon will then immediately engorge themselves upon the product anyway.

Unless your market is specifically Twitter leftist losers the only correct response is to simply not respond to their hysterical cries of “witch”. These things last literally five minutes at best. I mean without looking who even remembers the name of the place in question? Tomorrow nobody will remember this ever happened.

All service industries ought to close down on weekends in order teach the government and the public a lesson

No, just offer “special prices” to unionists; when said unionists present their union cards for the special prices—which would twice or thrice the normal, non-union price—, waiters could say, “You do support the paying of penalty rates, don’t you?”

Penalty rates should only apply after a minimum number of hours worked rather than what day you work. It makes no sense to give a person, who might only work one day, 2.75 times wages and standard rates to another who might work much longer hours during the week.

The post has since been removed, and the Bombay Bicycle Club (BBC) offered an apology late last night.
“The BBC ownership would like to apologise for our sign and Facebook post. We regret the wording. There was no intention to offend anyone.”
When contacted by SmartCompany this morning, the Bombay Bicycle Club declined to comment.

Twostix – that may be so, but not all businesses can handle the heat like Alan Jones. The Bombay crowd have already gone to ground:

But that’s the point, they should just ignore it as demonstrably nothing will come of it. You could ask a thousand South Australians and maybe 20 will have heard the story, and of that tomorrow maybe 10 will even remember the name.

I’m with Twostix. Any publicity is good publicity. (Just so long as they spell your name correctly)

The BBC should have had the balls to withstand the outcry. It was only from wankers.
Their customer base largely wouldn’t give a farq about the fuss, dickhead uni students & screeching ageing lefties would parade in the street outside, keeping the joint in the news.

I think the employees should work for what they are happy to receive. I see the post in the News article about multiplying 2.75 by zero as that is how much that person will spend… well goes for the employees too. Maybe at 2x pay it would be economical but at 2.75x they instead get nothing, why the government has any say in a private agreement that both parties are happy with is insane, and the out right acceptance of this status quo is baffling.

Just go to your local Chinese. The whole family helps out for free. And ALWAYS pay cash. They are the only subversives left in the nation. Their bravery, hard work and willingness to defy government deserves our support.

Nothing gets done at my place on a public holiday, or even on a Sunday (& now Saturday) that can be done at any other time.
I have posted before (on some lefy hobby site) about the unintended consequences of eliminating AWA’s and forcing us all on to strict awards. This has significant negative impact not just on people’s pay packets, and their household budget at home, but on their enjoyment of life.

You oughta have seen the screeching stupidity coming from the mendicant uni-student/uni lecturer left when I pointed out the damage that was done.
It was as if it were I who was responsible for making the law.

Schadenfreude was at the extreme that Easter week a couple of years ago, when half the restaurants in the nation closed for the entire week. Get used to more of it you brain-dead left wingers. You caused it.

I keep encouraging my local cafe owner to publish “variable labour rate” tiered pricing on his menu. He hasn’t come around yet, though he has resorted to a 10% surcharge on public holidays.

ESB, are you aware that tiered pricing on menus is against the law? The ALP saw to that when they brought in the Fair Work Act.
Your cafe has to print a totally separate menu for each & every price change.

The ALP knew how the inflexibility of the Fair Work Act was going to have a negative impact on society. In bog standard lefty fashion, they believed they could legislate away physical obstacles.

See this is the exact problem that the lefties can’t get their heads around.

Let’s say wages are as low as 10% of costs.
These go up 250% on weekends.
Now they are about 25% of costs. Costs have gone up in total by 15%.
Well unless margins in your average restaurant are higher than 15%, the restaurant is instantly running at a loss…

The problem is simply that while wages are only one part of the costs, and rents are a relatively high factor, the increase in wages is so massive – 250% – that it is a major factor.

Simple, get rid of all penalty rates, make retirement age compulsory only at 75 for both sexes, get rid of minimum wage, and then see where we settle. Oh and new start for only six months max, separate unemployment benefits for people who have actually lost a job and were also long term workers, no single mum payments, enforce baby support payments, no disability payments, or income management for these sectors, as is in NT.

ESB, are you aware that tiered pricing on menus is against the law? The ALP saw to that when they brought in the Fair Work Act.
Your cafe has to print a totally separate menu for each & every price change.

Some restuarants in Adelaide do close on public holidays because of the penalty rates, though that probably makes life easier and more profitable for those that do decide to open as they get more customers.

I do wish they’d get rid of the stupid trading hour restrictions in Adelaide though. Because of them large supermarkets have to close at 9pm. But they can (and do) open at 12am as the legislation only enforced how late they can open, not how early they can open.

I’m with Twostix. Any publicity is good publicity. (Just so long as they spell your name correctly)

I think in this specific case where they’re going to get hurt is people having been adding bad reviews to restaurant review websites for that place. And that will hurt their business in the long term no matter the short term boost in publicity.

I think in this specific case where they’re going to get hurt is people having been adding bad reviews to restaurant review websites for that place.

Online reviews have turned out to be tragically prone to corruption. There is no “wisdom of the crowd”.
This can work in favour of the pub (for it is a pub) they can apply to the online review website to have their history cancelled, citing the negative publicity that is not related to their product or service.

Some restuarants in Adelaide do close on public holidays because of the penalty rates, though that probably makes life easier and more profitable for those that do decide to open as they get more customers.

Not all happy days and pixie dust for the bloody customer though, who has to stand around for an hour or so waiting for a table with hundreds of other arseholes.

You get charged an extra 15%, the staff are running around trying to get through 100 covers an hour when the kitchen normally handles 30, when you do finally get a seat people start coming up to your table asking how much longer your gunna be, parking is a nightmare. It’s a clusterfuck.

My point about it being silly is that it caused a backlash. Whether or not you think it is great and I agree it makes a point well, it put a lot of people offside.

So first you suggest that it is silly because it is somehow conceptually unsound. Then when challenged on its conceptual soundness, you resort to appealing to the wisdom of popular prejudice, i.e. it was a poor choice as it caused a backlash. Hilarious.

It worries me to think that someone as irrational and infantile as you is apparently an engineer.

Let’s say wages are as low as 10% of costs.
These go up 250% on weekends.
Now they are about 25% of costs. Costs have gone up in total by 15%.
Well unless margins in your average restaurant are higher than 15%, the restaurant is instantly running at a loss…

Funnily enough, many of the restaurants I go to have a 15% public holiday surcharge. Those out on public holidays seem mostly fine with it as they understand the workers are getting paid more, and the business isn’t actually out of pocket. Seems like a storm in a tea cup made up by some precious libertarians who can’t do maths.

Depends where you are Desipis.
Take it from me, in some demographics there is a severe backlash to any price increase on public holidays. (And an equally nasty backlash against any attempt to avoid paying “fair” public holiday loadings)
Having only ever been in places where public holidays are much quieter than usual (say half the business on a public hol Monday compared to an average Monday) I’ve never been able to justify payment of huge wages.
It is difficult for me to not lose money on a public holiday. Furthermore, any week with a public holiday in it is a light week, roughly two-thirds the income of a regular week.

If I either closed, or raised a price by one cent, for a public holiday, I’d suffer a community backlash that’d be difficult to recover from.
The only way I can get out of paying public holiday loading is on public holidays anybody who is subject to such loading doesn’t work (and thus has no pay).

It is difficult for me to not lose money on a public holiday… If I … closed I’d suffer a community backlash that’d be difficult to recover from.

Sounds like opening on public holidays is a marketing investment for you. If you can’t make the money back over the rest of the year then it sounds like your business is so close to the rocks that small regulatory changes aren’t going to save it.

Sounds like opening on public holidays is a marketing investment for you. If you can’t make the money back over the rest of the year then it sounds like your business is so close to the rocks that small regulatory changes aren’t going to save it.

Yea yea yea. Like everybody, I just love working public holidays for the fun of it.

Funnily enough, many of the restaurants I go to have a 15% public holiday surcharge. Those out on public holidays seem mostly fine with it as they understand the workers are getting paid more, and the business isn’t actually out of pocket. Seems like a storm in a tea cup made up by some precious libertarians who can’t do maths.

Except those raging against the machine leftists who find such rationalisations offensive and ‘boycott’ said restaurants.

Another industry, another state.
Begin work at 5:50am pay for the WHOLE shift is 2.5 times standard rate
After 6:00am standard rate
Begin at 11:pm standard rate applies but if working after 12:00 midnight the whole shift is 3x standard rates.

We are choosing to NOT employ more people and limiting our business growth

Except those raging against the machine leftists who find such rationalisations offensive and ‘boycott’ said restaurants.

I very much doubt there would have been a backlash if the restuarant had instead made a statement saying that they support the penalty rates for their employees (blah blah usual reasons given) but that it also means that there would have to be a 15% public holiday surchage to help pay for it. As desipis says its not that uncommon anyway.

Anyway I’m surprised that small businesses (and it usually is the small ones presumably with no decent social media experience or advice) think they can rant about their employees on a site like facebook or twitter and not experience a public backlash that goes viral.

This can work in favour of the pub (for it is a pub) they can apply to the online review website to have their history cancelled, citing the negative publicity that is not related to their product or service.

The bottom line is an unskilled nobody is getting $50 an hours for carrying plates around and punching in orders onto a handheld device, a skill that kids have grasped by age 4.

FIFTY DOLLARS…AN HOUR.

And what is with the phrase ‘PENALTY rates’? Fucking leftards and their seizure of language, the implication is that employers are being PUNISHED for employing people…! And there’s that other word; “AWARD”.
A job is a prize and employers are evil capitalist pigs who must have every last cent flogged out of them.

Some restuarants in Adelaide do close on public holidays because of the penalty rates, though that probably makes life easier and more profitable for those that do decide to open as they get more customers.

…. based on the simplistic assumption that demand for restaurant meals is totally inelastic (… fuck! I have lapsed into Econo-speak).
More likely that some portion of this discretionary spend will find it’s way into more competitive (read less regulated, less unionised) sectors of the economy.
Or possibly go in the kitty for the next Bali holiday, which will be just great for Australian jobs.

The bottom line is an unskilled nobody is getting $50 an hours for carrying plates around and punching in orders onto a handheld device, a skill that kids have grasped by age 4.

I think you have nailed that.
More than I got paid in my final year as a medical specialist trainee just a few years ago including overnight and weekends. Interestingly neither Medicare nor health funds pay me a cent more for elective medical work done overnight, on weekends, or public holidays.

Cripes, you have to be a gibbering maniac like Numbers to go to an Adelaide restaurant on a public holiday. You drive in, wishing that snaggle-toothed SA ‘drivers’ could be magically replaced by a horde of far safer meth-and-crack-highball filled homicidal maniacs on rocket-sleds. Having parked in an excrement-filled parking station with skeletal drooling 12 year old smack-hags drumming their dying heels in the stairwells while panting greasy members of the SA power-elite bugger fat little boys in their Lexus sedans, you push your way through crowds of third-generation unemployed touting the vile carnal delights of their little sisters and mothers in the street. After being patronised by the leering fat frecklepuncher you get a seat where a bepimpled pus-oozing unwashed waitron takes your order for seventh-rate food based on rotting meat and greasy overcooked vegetables set in a grey slime they laughingly call exotic sauce. Oh, it’s exotic all right: it will give you enough diseases to sent the staff at the US CDC into rhapsodic ecstasies of delight. If you go to the shitter you have to claw your way through hordes of grinning perverts only to find three serial killers are in the cubicle chopping up some unemployed cousin so they can steal his dole payments, and you realise you really should not have ordered the pork chops as you now recall that it was not a food inspector stamp on them but a fucking tattoo. Then you think ‘no wonder the swivel-eyed German loon cooking in the kitchen never stopped giggling’. And God help you if you decide to take a leak instead, as there will be an ALP front bencher trussed up in leather straps lying in the trough and saying ‘a little more to the right, please, big boy’. Fight your way back to the table and you find your missus with torn clothes and a distracted air, having spent the last ten minutes you were away in hand to hand combat fighting off Juliar Gillard and her 300kg predatory bull dyke mates with the fish-fork and salt cellar. You then realise the restaurant’s playing a medly of the lying Slapper’s eight most shrieky speeches to the Emily’s List baby-murdering society and you develop dark and queasy suspicions about the veal medallions. After you’ve paid $600 for this experience and got to the point where the medico’s in the isolation suits in your plague ward are no longer poking you with a Zulu assegai to make damned sure you stay away from them you start to realise just why South Australia’s number plates bear the logo ‘SA – The Festering State’.

According to some here, no worker should be expected to work on a public holiday for less than 2.75 times the normal wage. And yet business owners are supposed to be happy to lose money on a public holiday. Maybe it would be fair if business owners also increased their profit margins to 2.75 times that of normal trade, otherwise it may not be worth their effort to open on public holidays. And to make it even fairer all round, their suppliers should also increase their margins to 2.75 times.

Sounds like opening on public holidays is a marketing investment for you.

What you really meant to say is “sounds like offering to work on public holidays for only marginally more than regular wages is an investment in your future employment by showing employers that you are reliable and reasonable, and demonstrates your grasp of the reality that you cannot keep a job unless the boss turns a profit”. Fixed it for you.

The bottom line is an unskilled nobody is getting $50 an hours for carrying plates around and punching in orders onto a handheld device, a skill that kids have grasped by age 4.

Meanwhile others not in the hospitality industry are being paid that much to not even show up for work. Amortising the cost of public holidays and penalty rates is a simple part of doing business in this country. If you can’t manage that, you’ve got bugger all chance of making it in business anyway.

Amortising the cost of public holidays and penalty rates is a simple part of doing business in this country. If you can’t manage that, you’ve got bugger all chance of making it in business anyway.just close during times of public holidays and high penalty rates, then you don’t have to amortise anything, and your business will be more profitable.

Meanwhile others not in the hospitality industry are being paid that much to not even show up for work.

Not by government fiat they’re not.

Unless you’re talking about union thugs.

Moreover, the status of hospitality staff is changing in the cultural conciousness from hard working poor dears to overpaid, rude and lazy. $50 an hour for some meandering backpacker to fuck up an order is driving that change in reputation.

People routinely underestimate how much wages are proportionally to a business’s costs, in rich developed countries like Australia. And how much of your suppliers costs are also wage-driven.

It seems people just prefer to believe in private business people as profiteers ruthlessly exploiting workers, even when they see the business owners going broke or living more frugally than their customers or employees.

Whenever I visit Australia on business, since I’m appalled by the rising restaurant prices and often dine alone, I talk to the owners and managers to find out what their issues are (I’m from an engineering business but am interested in the issues any business faces). Every single one of them in every city I go mentions penalty rates but they are shy about saying so publicly because of customer, political and union backlash. Not to mention the plethora of other charges that keep rising, X for every table on the street, Y for background music, Z for outdoor heaters, and so on.

You quickly become aware when talking to locals that opinion has become divided on partisan lines: mention penalty rates to a Labor supporter and they go from 0 to ballistic in record time. They seem blind to the otherwise popular restaurants that are not opening on Sundays or public holidays

Sounds like a very effective marketing ploy for the savvy restaurant owner.

No nincompoop, I suspect – if we hadn’t heard of the place yesterday we certainly know about it today. A testament to the effectiveness as a promotional tool of social media and an indignant, self righteous, left leaning media

Just getting back to Desi’s appalling comment above. Particularly this…

Amortising the cost of public holidays and penalty rates is a simple part of doing business in this country. If you can’t manage that, you’ve got bugger all chance of making it in business anyway.

These penalty rates were introduced by the Liars party after the 2007 elections. Businesses didn’t have to live with these appalling laws even before workchoices as the despicable communist lying Slapper took industrial relations back to the period before the Keating reforms.

You ought to be caned in the public square for making a comment like that, Desi…… and no antibiotics to help you get through it either.

Hey Dot, you only fail because you haven’t planned for penalty rates. If you plan for them you’ll prosper according to Desi. No fucking wonder you don’t want any leftwing idiot near the economic levers. They fuck everything up as always and never learn.

Amortising the cost of public holidays and penalty rates is a simple part of doing business in this country. If you can’t manage that, you’ve got bugger all chance of making it in business anyway.

Ah yes, this is what they say when facing their cronies in business.

Wait to you hear how the other Desi (the populist workers friend) will flog the heartless and inept business managers when talking to the people made unemployed by these snake oil economic prescriptions.

Yes, but did anyone see what the Adelaide Advertiser did with the story?

An Adelaide pub continued to suffer a stinging backlash online yesterday after a botched attempt to defend its stance on increased wages for hospitality workers on public holidays.

Absolutely zero fear of The Advertising pandering to Right, as other News Ltd papers are often (falsely) accused of. It’s as Left as any News Ltd paper, surely.

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